Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Mullets: 'Nuff Said

Episode Date: April 29, 2020

Business in the front, you know the rest. Listen in as we discuss the lifestyle choice that is the mullet. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Jason Flom, and you're Maggie Freeling. Hey, Jason. Every day we learn about another person who shouldn't be in prison. 58 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. So glad you're home. If you want to be part of this work, listen to Wrongful Conviction. The podcast where we hand the mic to innocent people to hear their stories. How do you send someone innocent to prison?

Listen to new episodes of Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling and Jason Flom on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, and welcome to Short Stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. This is going to be kind of short, which Chuck and I were just discussing. So let's go on with a long meandering intro that has nothing to do with anything, Chuck. Well, maybe it's going to be short in the front. Oh, wow. And then maybe, you know what we should have done? What? Is we should have done like two minutes and then a commercial break and then 10 minutes.

That's a great idea. Maybe we will. The mullet of podcasting. We'll edit out this part where we figure it out as we're doing it too. All right. Maybe we should take a break. Nice. Man, that's an ultra short mullet right there. All right.

So we're talking about the mullet. Business in the front, party in the back. Always, I thought was very funny of this hairstyle where your hair is short in the front and top and long in the back. The one that really got me that I've never heard before. I know, I know which one. The Missouri Compromise. Yeah, that one or, that's a good one. Kentucky Waterfall. I hadn't heard that one before either. I hadn't either. That one got me, but for some reason, the Missouri Compromise really gets me.

It's like the hair is working it out, you know? Right. Or the teenage Judas Priest fan is working it out with his mom. So let's go ahead and level set here and talk about our own history with the mullet. Have you had a mullet ever? No. Have you? Okay.

I have. What? I did, man. There was a time, believe it or not, in the 80s where the mullet was sort of a skater haircut. It was kind of short and spiky and then a little longer in the back. And this was pre-Billy Ray Cyrus and pre-sort of anyone calling it a mullet. But looking back, it was definitely what you would consider a mullet, but it was kind of like a cool skater kid haircut. Yeah, Tony Hawk had one. Did he? Yeah, and one of the differentiators too was like, it wasn't just short bangs on top, like it would come over the one eye from the side. But yeah, it would be spiky on top and then long in the back. It totally was a mullet.

I never put two and two together like that. But no, I still never had one. But there is a very embarrassing picture from me from like the 10th grade from a church, whatever album, annual yearbook, what are they called when they're churches? I have no idea. Well, churches used to put these out every few years. Bible? Hymnal? Yeah, it's a Bible and we were all in it. But I had a mullet. This is the only picture of me with a mullet in existence. And I was wearing a mullet and paisley maroon suspenders and a tie. Wow. And my brother still threatens to.

That's sort of his big thing he holds over my head. Attention, Scott. I'm speaking directly to you now. We demand to see that photo yeah i will i will say that i got wise pretty quick and by the end of 10th grade it was a short-lived haircut and i had sort of the other skater look which was just like long bangs right yeah so so you just lopped off the back of that t Hawk cut. Yeah, and there was still a little hair back there. But, I mean, actually, the most embarrassing haircut I had in high school

was that mushroom when you would shave around your ears and then the bottom of the back and just have sort of a big poof on top. I'm having trouble. I'll have to dig up pictures. It was a style for a little while. My high school haircut was a Caesar. You remember those? Oh, sure.

I had one of those for years and years and years. Didn't look good on anybody. Especially not that guy on the original CSI series. Do you remember him? Did you ever watch that? No, I never saw it. There was a guy who was an older guy, like well into middle age, who had a Caesar. And it wasn't like accidental.

Like he had a Caesar haircut. And it was just an odd hairstyle choice, I think, for him. All right. Maybe we should take a break and we'll actually talk about the mullet when we come back. Does that sound good? Sounds great. If you want to know, then you're in luck. Just listen up to Josh and Chuck.

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those are all an important part of the story. It's the way that the people are experiencing reggaeton along with the musicians. Listen to El Flow as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Stuff you should know. Stuff you should know. All right, Chuck, so let's get down to the mullet, a.k.a. hockey hair. That's another term for it. Yeah.

Some credit the Beastie Boys with popularizing the term mullet. They had a song on ill communication in 1994 called Mullet Head, where Ad-Rock says, you want to know what's a mullet? Well, I got a little story to tell about a hairstyle that's a way of life. Have you ever seen a mullet wife? It doesn't make that much sense, but it does seem to be like the first real reference to this hairstyle using the word mullet from what anybody can tell. To this hairstyle using the word mullet from what anybody can tell. Yeah, and the term mullet head has long been around just as a general derogatory term for a dummy. Yeah. Which had nothing to do with a haircut.

And they think that may have come over from the British derogatory term mull head. Oh, really? But it's still, yeah, that's what they said, but it still doesn't explain. And maybe they just aren't related how the haircut got this name after this weird-looking fish. Right. So, I guess Mike D wrote a little article about what they were talking about in that song, Mullet Head, and he said that the mullet fish, the mullet fish is basically just like one long, it's like oblong. It's like a drawing of a whale, basically. It doesn't have any kind of anything that would suggest its head is separate from its body. And apparently when it rots, it rots from the neck down, which kind of gives it the appearance a bit of a mullet. at fish, I guess as far as Mike D. or Ed Rock thought, and that that's how he explained where that term came from. But the use of the word mullet head to mean kind of a dummy makes Mark Twain frequently cited as the guy who coined the term mullet, which is way off, because he was using it in that sense that you were saying, which is kind of thick-headed or

dumb or something like that. Yeah. I think the fun thing about this article, which we got from HowStuffWorks, was kind of tracing back the actual hairstyle through history. And if you go back and look, there's a great article on history.com. A woman named Linda Lachina writes about the ancient Greek poet Homer. And the Iliad writes about this group of spearmen called the Abantes. And they had their forelocks cropped and hair grown long at the backs. That's a mullet. That's a full mullet. Yeah, and Homer wrote the Iliad in the 8th century BCE.

in the 8th century BCE. So almost 3,000 years ago, at the latest, people were already wearing mullets. And there's this other article from Dazed Digital by Oliver Lunn that talks about, and I've seen pictures of prehistoric peoples that look like they kind of have a mullet.

And practically, that kind of makes sense because if you're hunting and gathering, you need that hair out of your eyes. So you might cut it off with a stone tool up front. And then you want it a little further in the back to protect from sun or from rain or to help keep you warm. Yeah, the sun's a big one. I suspect that's why Andre Agassi had one because he had to go play tennis in the sun all the time and was very sensitive about his neck getting sunburned. Yeah, Agassi, you think of mullets, you think of Agassi, you think of Billy Ray Cyrus. Oh, yeah. And there was a basketball player for the University of Florida named Dwayne Shintzis that I think he played pro for a little while, but he was a big, tall center, and he had a fantastic boxy mullet.

Did he really? Okay. I always think of Sean Thomas Scott, Sean William Scott, Kristen Scott Thomas, one of those. He was in Dude, Where's My Car, the non-Ashton Kutcher guy. That was Kristen Scott Thomas. Right. Yeah.

He had a really fantastic mullet in Old School. You remember that? Oh, yeah. Old School was, that was a good movie. Yeah, it was. I mean, it was funny. It was very funny. But he's the guy who shows up with, I can't remember what kind of animal, to the birthday party, the kids party. He has a tranquilizer gun that Will Ferrell accidentally shoots himself with. Is this Stifler? Yeah, Stifler.

That's right. Yeah, he's funny. You know what other movie he was in that was underrated and underseen is not Step Brothers, Big Brothers? Oh, yes. Was that the name of it where he and Paul Rudd? Role Models, that's it. That is a good movie. You know, Paul Rudd wrote that himself.

Oh, he did? That was a David Wayne-directed movie, so it all makes sense. It was good all around. Everybody in that was great. Yeah, he was very funny. A very underrated movie, I think. Should we talk about a couple of the cool examples of mullets in rock history? You're about to step into some controversy, but I'll watch you do it. Well, there's two that I can really think of. The one this article mentions is David Bowie. That's the controversial one. Yeah, I mean, if you look at Ziggy Stardust in that era,

he definitely has what you would consider a mullet, but it's also dyed red, and he's wearing the Ziggy Stardust outfit. So it's hard to call that a mullet, even though it kind of is. Well, from what I saw, the people who say it's not a mullet just basically say David Bowie was literally too cool to have what you would call a mullet,

even when he was wearing a mullet. That's their argument, basically, which, I mean, that's pretty impressive as far as the cool factor goes, that people will defend you like that. pretty impressive as far as the cool factor goes that people will defend you like that. Yeah. The other example is there was a time in the 70s where both Paul and Linda McCartney had matching mullets. And it was really puffy and spiky on both of them and very long in the back. So, you know, it was a look. It was a look for a couple for sure. What about Jane Fonda and Clute? That wasn't a mullet, really.

My mom had that haircut for a little while in the 70s. That sort of, I mean, it's a fee mullet, if anything. Did you just coin that term? Oh, no, you never heard that? No. No, the lady mullet was always called a fee mullet. But I know what haircut you're talking about. It was sort of like a haystack with a little bit in the back.

Yeah, I guess that's a good way to put it. Florence Henderson had one for a little while kind of on the Brady Bunch too. I think of Jane Fonda's as a straight-up mullet, but maybe it is just a fee mullet. Clute was such a good movie. I never saw it. I'm not even sure what it's about. Oh, man, you should check it out.

It's awesome. Okay, I will. I will. It's a mystery. Okay, don't spoil it for me. Hey, speaking of mysteries and movies, get this. I went back and watched the original 70s Sidney Lumet version of Murder on the Orient Express. Oh, was it good?

It is delightful. Albert Finney plays Hercule Poirot. And I couldn't even recognize him for the first 30 minutes. He does such a good job. It's a really great movie. It's on the internet, so you can find it. One final mullet wearer we should mention is none other than President James K. Polk. If you go look him up, he has a mullet. Yeah. And what was the name of,

I want to say Mogwai, but it wasn't. The bad guy, he wasn't a Mohawk. I can't remember what he was, but in Last of the Mohicans. Do you remember the bad guy played by Wes Studi? He had a mullet. I don't care what you call it. It was a mullet he was wearing. And that was a great movie, too. Yeah. I was trying to think of a PC joke, but I can't.

Okay. We'll just leave it at that, then. That's it for short stuff, everybody. That's it. We out. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.